Men its time you shared the load

Who does the laundry in your home? The women of course, as they are the ones who are delegated this work. The task of doing the grubby, grimy and tiring work is always a woman/s lot. A woman is supposed to do all kinds of work from cleaning the home, cooking and serving breakfast, preparing meals, entertaining guests and keeping the linen and clothes sparkling and clean. No one ever stops to give it a second thought, giving a helping hand is beyond the imagination of the men folk. They have always seen their mother and grandmother toiling with these tasks. As a child they have been taught that this is not a task for them and even if they ever attempted to do their own laundry or try to help they were hustled away from the scene of action saying that laundry was a woman’s task. So the very thought was killed before it could take birth. The idea got rooted in their minds that laundry is always a woman’s task. With the passage of time they became firm believers that laundry and women go hand in hand.
This is the common scenario in nearly every household. Women do all the work while the men loll on the sofa watching TV or solving crosswords. Women have taken all this in their stride and have never thought of complaining. Even when they have hinted for some help they have only got disdainful looks in return.
The scene in my home was quite different. A fulltime dhobi used to come and take a bundle full of dirty clothes and come back with a pack of freshly starched clean clothes. My mother only had to check the clothes from the list of clothes that had been given to the washer man. The heavy curtains, sheets and sarees along with my father’s shirts and pants were taken care of by a male dhobi. It never crossed my mind that laundry was a woman’s task alone. How ever when in need we did wash a set of our clothes. I along with my brother not only helped in rinsing the clothes in soap water but also loved to wring them and put them on the clothesline to dry. Working together in doing the laundry always made us happy and relaxed. We never burdened our mother with the task of doing the laundry all alone. We were always by her side to give her a helping hand. We believe in the concept of #ShareTheLoad and have been a part of it for many years.
Now Ariel and BlogAdda have brought into the limelight the plight of numerous women who have been working as slaves bonded to the chains of laundry. I am hopeful and rather sure that such a campaign would bring a great change in the lives of many women because I am sure that the men would give a serious thought to this issue and give a helping hand to their mother and wife by #ShareTheLoad. Even the mothers would not shy away from the thought of teaching their children girls and boys alike to give a helping hand with the laundry. You can now expect to see more smiling women who do not have the burden of the laundry as someone is there to #ShareTheLoad

 “I am joining the Ariel #ShareTheLoad campaign at BlogAdda and blogging about the prejudice related to household chores being passed on to the next generation.”